Welcome!  You are visitor !
Want to e-mail me (for comments/suggestions/corrections)?
 

 Assembly Attempt (July 6, 2007)- Another busy time for this family, and not enough of that time spent on the Mini.  The housing market has come down far enough that we were just able to purchase a nice little home in a great, older neighborhood.  I got my three-car garage out of the deal, so I'm happy!  We plan on being here for some time, so it's time to settle in, get the shop up and functioning, and get back at working on my Mini!  To that end, I invited some of the Sacramento area locals over for some beverages and barbeque (and a little cam timing, if the mood took us).  Prior to Nick and Steve's arrival (they were the only two able to show), I installed my Keith Calver windage tray into my shiny, newly-rebuilt transmission.  The guys showed up shortly after I was done.  It was an extremely hot day, with the thermometer hitting over 100 degrees, but we pushed through the discomfort and...  Got nowhere.  Once we got the cam in place, the cam bearings were so tight that we stopped what we were doing and decided to call it a day.  I called up one shop for their opinion, and they told me that the best thing to do would be to buy new bearings.  This depressed me, as I would lose the money I had invested in the current set (cost of bearings, cost of coating them, and cost of installation), but if that was the right thing to do, then it was the right thing to do.  Shopping around, I found a very inexpensive set on MiniMania, via an internet special (about half the normal cost).  I called up to get the make of the bearings, and as luck would have it, the man that answered the phone happened to be the man who had, for the past several years, been building engines for MiniMania.  He said that he'd used those bearings on most of the builds he'd done, and thought they were good.  We talked a little bit about my situation, and he said that I probably had a nick in the rear-most bearing, as it's common for shops used to dealing with big American engines (which G&G certainly is) to ding that bearing.  He told me to find the shiny spot on my bearing and gently scrape at it with a razor blade.  Happily, I went back to my engine, found the shiny spot (it was actually on the front bearing for some odd reason), carefully scraped, and was actually able to get the cam to move without nearly so much force!  It's still tighter than I'd like it to be, but I think that with time the high spots and low spots from the sand blasting, in preparation for the coatings, will normalize and I'll have a nice, loose cam.  Problem solved!  Just to be safe, though, I'll run the came round a bit and see if it doesn't loosen up some, prior to an actual final assembly and bed-in.

 

Engine Plate (December 30, 2006)- An engine adapter designed to mount my engine transversely on my engine stand seemed like such an easy thing to build.  Ah, the bitter lessons we learn as we go through life!  I now have two engine adapters, but they weren't cheap, nor easy to build!  But they're done, and one holds my engine block in its loving embrace, even as I write this.  Mounting the engine this way on the stand allows for much greater freedom when installing bits on the block, and creates a much smaller bending moment on the engine stand (allowing me to sleep easier at night, knowing that it's a $35 cheapie Harbor Freight engine stand that carries my beloved engine). 

 

Door Hanging (October 4, 2006)- I decided it was high time I took on the much-needed door installation.  Sadly, with little time, mis-aligned door holes (thanks to the body man's less than judicious use of Bondo on the passenger door), and only myself to hang it, this task took much longer than it should have, and I still don't have a properly hung door!  I had to close up for the weekend, and leave my door hanging on one hinge and strapping.  I hope to be able to get back to it soon!

 

Settled In (August 24, 2006)- Wow!  It's been a wild couple of months!  We're finally settled in to our new home.  Due to my wife's not being allowed to work remotely, we are unable to buy a home in the Sacramento, CA area (where home prices are more than double what they are for a comparable home in Houston), but we did find a very nice little house to rent for a year.  It has a small 2-car garage, so things are tight with all of my things in there, but we're making it! 

Thankfully, the trip out with the Mini was fairly uneventful.  We had some touch-n-go moments with the trailer, but once we got some more weight shifted forward, we were able to keep the fishtailing to a minimum.  And aside from the trucker that thought we were trying to get ahead of him, so he decided to try to  kill us by preventing us from merging into his lane.  Needless to say, I was NOT happy with him, and called him into his company.  I hope that guy is doing the unemployment shuffle right now.

The second, and final, trip out was with my wife's car.  We took a different route, and it was much more scenic.  I highly recommend the Hwy 40 route, versus the I-10 route, for anyone making the California-Texas trek.  That trip was uneventful for me, but my buddy Donn (who flew out to help me drive it) had some issues with a cancelled flight, and extended morning at Dallas Fort Worth Airport, waiting for me to arrive.

The Mini is finally in my garage, after being stored at my sister's house for a couple of months because we were working on getting our things arranged into this smaller home.  A newfound friend, Lee, helped me out with getting it from my sister's home to our home.  I owe him a big THANK YOU for helping out a complete stranger; driving a half hour one-way, and towing the Mini, taking no compensation in return.  A true gentleman!

I'm looking forward to beginning, again, on the car.  Since the last installment, there really has not been anything done on the car, other than packing things away on shelves, and lightening my load wherever possible. 

 

Brake Rebuild (June 9, 2006)- One of the local Mini guys, Keith, needed a hand with working on his brakes, so some of the locals (Nicholas Upton, Steve McGee, and I) went out and gave him a hand.  Steve was a veritable treasure trove of brake knowledge, and made the task of rebuilding the aged Minis brakes a much easier one!  The car is a worthy project, but the previous owner was someone who had neither the technical know-how, nor the means to do it right.  It was sold to Keith, and is in better hands.  He's well on his way to making the car run, handle, and look better than it has in years!

 

Lift Off (May 29, 2006)- This has been a rather busy Memorial Day Weekend (Have you hugged a soldier today?).  Saturday I spent mostly preparing my rear subframe for installation into the car.  I was able (with soaking in WD40 for 48 hours, then freezing, and finally concentrated heat) to finally remove the old knuckle joints from my ancient Hi-Los, and cleaned them up for installation.  I installed my new cones, removed the old knuckles' nylon cups from the swingarms (and managed to drop one swingarm on my bare toe!), and got everything back together.  I then got my wheels out of storage and popped them on.  Sunday was spent building a cart upon which to place the front of the car, get everything aligned, and call up five buddies to come help lift the car off of the rotisserie and onto the rear subframe and cart.  Everything went together fairly well, but the extreme thickness of my RhinoLiner caused some problems when trying to get the holes to match up.  It was a TIGHT fit back there, to be sure!

Once the car was on the cart and subframe, it was time to disassemble the rotisserie frame.  Sure enough, that thing was not safe to do another car, so I took measurements of it, and they can be found here, and on the rotisserie page.  The rotisserie will have some suggestions for building another one, too, as if I were to do another one, I would save some money and make some needed improvements in the process.

Monday was spent just emptying my 10'x10' storage unit so that I would be prepared for our pending move.  I bug-bombed, loaded, and unloaded back into the garage all yesterday, and I was exhausted by the end of it!  But on the plus side, all that's left is to load up the Mini, load up my parts and essentials for living in Cali alone for a few weeks, and then building some protection for said parts.  I'm not sure if I'll have time to update my blog until after we're fully moved to Roseville, but watch this space!  There will be something updated in the near future, I'm sure...

 

Paint Done! (May 3, 2006)- True to his word, Larry at LA Customs got me my shell back in enough time to allow me to do some necessary work on it, in preparation for the move, and it looks fantastic!  Click on the link to see the photos.  The mural turned out just lovely!  Once I get the shell down, and the main pole removed, the rotisserie will have served its purpose in life.  I'm glad I built it, but equally glad to have the space back in the garage!  One of the members of MOT is considering taking it for his restoration.  If he takes it, great.  If not, I'll dismantle it and give it a proper send-off (bonfire at LA Customs).

 

Mural Start (April 22, 2006)- I stopped by LA Customs this morning and picked up the doors and boot lid.  I now have two lovely, painted doors and one gorgeous boot lid in my possession!  While there, I took some pics of the other parts.  Larry has painted the roof white and begun the flag mural.  It should be smashing!  His work is great, and he had some terrific ideas for making the flag look like it's coming off the roof.  I can't wait to see the final product!

 

Almost There (April 19, 2006)- I've been waiting for the new DVD from MiniFilms to be released, so I haven't made any progress on the engine, because the DVD gives tips and tricks on engine assembly, by none other than Bill Sollis.  I want to build a quality engine, so I'm willing to wait for the completion of the engine pending the arrival of the DVD.  It was supposed to have been released in March, but pushed and pushed.  Now the expected ship date is April 27.  With this fairly confident date, I've gone ahead and purchased it.  I'm hoping to have it in my DVD player by mid-May. 

 

On the painting front, the Mini has made good progress in the past few weeks.  With my pending move to California, I've talked to Larry and LA Customs, and let him know that I need the car by mid-May, at the latest.  He's promised to have it to me soon, and he is looking to deliver.  I've watched the progress go from sealer to primer to paint to clear.  As of now, the boot lid, hinges, and doors are in clear, and I should be able to bring them home tomorrow to begin assembly of them this weekend.  The front is painted, but not clear-coated, because Larry will be painting in the lines that the body man obliterated with Bondo, and he needs some pictures to guide him.  I'll be dropping off some magazines with pics so that he has something to work with.  He's planning on beginning work on the roof mural tomorrow, too...  Progress is a wonderful thing!

 

Block Tapping (January 16, 2006)- I'd read a long time ago that tapping the block to transmission interface for 5/16" bolts was vastly superior to the standard 1/4" bolts, as 5/16" was stronger, and better bolts could be had that would not allow the transmission and block to separate under load (thus causing oil leaks).  Trying to do the right thing, I procured some 5/16" cap screws from a gentleman (and they weren't cheap!), and set them aside for potential usage.  Fast forward many months later (to today), and watch as I vainly attempt to find those cap screws.  Determined, I set out to tap the holes with a kit purchased at Home Depot, knowing that one day soon those cap screws would be found.  After finishing the tapping job (not a quick job, I might add), I decided to hunt down some parts I'd promised to get to some Mini enthusiasts.  There, lying in the cavity of my transmission on the shelf, I spied a bubble-wrap bag.  Pulling it out, it proved to be the missing cap screws!  I pulled one out of the bag, screwed it into the block, and quickly realized that there was a discrepency between the bolts I had, and the threaded holes I'd just completed.  It seems that what I'd purchased was a 5/16"-18 tap and drill bit set, and what I really needed was a 5/16"-24 tap and drill set...   D'oh!

 

Glass Repair (January 15, 2006)- Though this wasn't done on my Mini, it is certainly applicable!  My wife's car had a text-book bulls-eye rock chip in it, and instead of having it repaired by insurance, or paying someone $100 to do it for us, I opted to use a kit I'd spied at Walmart.  The kit costs $10, and looks easy enough to do.  So, here you'll find the process, as well as the results.

 

Hardnose (December 26, 2005)- Why am I completely unable to spray any paint I attempt to apply?  I've built my shiny new paint booth, put in a wonderful dry-air line, purchased a paint gun and line dryer, and still ended up brushing the Hardnose Paint onto my valve cover, engine block, and subframes.  Luckily, as with all of the other POR products I've dealth with so far, the product brushes easy and lays down flat.  The final product is VERY glossy, and looks like obsidian on the subframes.  I wasn't happy with the way it ended up on my valve cover (too much stuff landed in the paint while it was wet, and I ended up with some sags), so I'll be stripping that in the sandblast cabinet and powder coating it.  The block is passable, though, and the subframes are almost never seen, so the less-than-perfect finish is fine by me.  The main thing is that the parts are coated, and protected, and between a layer of POR-15 Rust Preventive Paint and an outer, protective layer of Hardnose Paint, I shouldn't ever have to worry about the subframes rotting away, as they are prone to do.

 

PaintBooth (December 15, 2005)- I've had problems updating the site due to some issues with my ISP.  However, those issues seem to be resolved, and I can now show what I've been doing the last couple of months!  In the photos link, I have the build process of my powder/paint booth.  Sadly, due to the cold weather and rain, I've been unable to use the booth since I finished it three weeks ago!  But I'm going to borrow a heater from a co-worker and get the garage warm enough to paint my engine block, valve cover, and subframes with POR's Hardnose Paint.

 

AirLine (November 12, 2005)-  I finished my air line system today.  I ran about 35 feet of 1/2" copper tubing, and have two air filters in-line, with an oiler on the end in case I need to use air tools.  Now I should have clean, dry air, and that is important for the sandblast cabinet as well as painting and powder coating.  The air compressor is in the back of the garage, and is attached to the copper tubing through a 4' length of air hose I found at a local hardware store (the chain stores don't seem to have that sort of thing).  All of my copper line is soldered together, and though it's not pretty, none of the joints leak.  I did almost burn the house down in the process of soldering the lines, though.  When I got to the point of adding in the filters, I used only one hand to turn off the propane torch.  Apparently, I have a sticky valve, and the torch was not turned completely off.  A very small, hard-to-see flame was still going, and the bottle rolled up against the wall and spent about 4 minutes heating up the sheetrock before I noticed it!  Yikes!  I threw water on the sheetrock, and gouged away at the wall, just in case there was smoldering material inside the wall.  Thankfully, it only heated the sheetrock, and did not start a fire.  I was worried, though!

 

Miscellany (November 8, 2005)-  Just random progress has been made, lately.  I measured my tolerances on bearings and rings, sent the bearings and pistons to PolyDyn for coating, and received them back in very short order.  I also stopped by LA Customs again and took some decent pictures of the shell.  Larry is making great progress on the 56 Chevy Wagon that is ahead of my project (it's got lines for flames on it, now), and I expect that my car will be in the 'booth' shortly.  I've also begun work on putting a copper line in for my air compressor to ensure clean, dry air to my sandblast cabinet and pending paint booth (which I'm also working on building, and should have both in my next update).  It's funny, but it almost seems that I'm doing more work on my infrastructure than I am on the actual Mini project!

 

Sealed (October 24, 2005)-  I went by LA Customs today to see what progress has been made on the Mini.  To my surprise, I had a grey Mini staring me in the face when I walked through the door!  It's only in the sealing primer, but that is much closer to being "done" than it has been!  The grey is actually pretty close to the grey of the final color, minus a very slight shade of green it needs to be the original color.  I snapped off a couple of photos with my Palm Zire71 (sorry for the poor quality of the pictures!).  There are a still a few, minor things that need to be fixed before it's ready for paint, but we're close!!!  Now, if the body guy can just get to finishing the doors and boot lid!

While there, I looked over a tricked out late model Corvette.  Truly "pimped out", as the convertible roof was made of ostrich leather, along with the interior and inside of the trunk.  The car is there to have Larry paint ostrich leather panels onto the inside of the hood.  I'll have to get pictures of this car when I go back on Friday with my camera!

 

A Measure of Praise (October 15, 2005)-  I'm embarrassed to say this, but my last engine build (Ursula, the BRG Mini on my home page) was an engine assembly, rather than a well thought-out build.  Seven Enterprises did my machining work, and I relied on their experience and expertise to make sure that my tolerances were good, but there are several things that they don't measure, and I know that now.  One of those would be the rings (since I put those in myself!).

On this engine, I'm trying to be careful with measurements.  Today I attempted to measure main and connecting rod bearings, end float, and ring gap.  However, since I received the wrong main bearings, I was unable to do any crank-related work, and instead focused on the ring gap.  Wouldn't you know it?  Two of the #2 rings were too tight!  This being a turbo engine, and expected to run on the warm side, this is not a good thing!  So, I went at the ring ends with 1500 grit paper, and got them to 0.010".  After the rings bed in, I imagine that they will open up a little more, so this should be just about right (low end of the spec is 0.008").  Had I not measured, this could have been an issue, down the road, that could have been detrimental to pistons and, hence, engine...

 

Racked (October 9, 2005)-  It's hard to believe that it's been a month since I last updated my blog.  It's not like I haven't been busy, of course.  Hurricane Rita took a two week-end chunk of my time (between leaving the area one weekend, and un-storm-prepping the house after we returned), and I did conclude the side-by-side comparison.  But to make up for my lack of Mini progress, I determined to put my nose to the grind-stone and make a serious push to move the project forward.  My goal was to have my engine block, valve cover, and subframes coated in POR's Hardnose Paint.  However, in order to do that, I needed lots of supplies (there went Saturday), and I needed to build a stand from which to hang my parts and lean-to style painting booth.  I made it as far as the stand.  The goal of the stand is that it be useful for both painting, and powder coating.  Thus, it had to be mobile (I don't want to knock powder off of parts due to transferring from point A to point B), and height-adjustable.  To do this, I took the bottom frame of a seldom-used Alltrade tool tray (which has caster wheels and adjusts for height), and made a framework to sit on top that would allow an oven rack to slide on and off.  Pictures of it are in the photos link, above.

The other productive thing I did this weekend was to obtain real blast media, and replace the cheap, ceramic sandblasting gun with a more robust model from Eastwood.  The sand I was using (common playground sand from the hardware store) was too coarse, as well as too inconsistent.  Cheap, yes, but I found that the inconsistencies were wearing the ceramic nozzle of the gun prematurely.  If I have to buy a new gun every few uses, how much is the playground sand really costing me?  In an effort to keep costs down (as I try to do in all things), I spoke with a representative of a local company where sandblasting is a very large part of their business.  This company disposes of large quantities of blast media that is still very usable to the hobbyist, but not good enough for serious production volumes.  Between the new gun and the proper blast media, I now have a VERY functional sandblasting cabinet!  Even with the spent blast media, I am able to strip paint more effectively and faster than I did with the sand.  I also purchased a small, $30 portable shop vacuum.  This was the right move, as my airflow is now good enough to draw small particles out of the air, but not so much that I need to fear popping my gloves again.  All in all, I am very pleased with my home-made sandblast cabinet, now.

 

PolyDyned! (September 4, 2005)-  I picked up my head from PolyDyn on Friday afternoon.  I'm quite happy with the quality of the coatings on the head, and am excited to see it mounted to the engine!  The exterior and interior have been coated with a material that will repel water and oil (thus helping the head to stay clean looking, no matter what hits it- unless it's urine, extended sunlight, or heat over 500 degrees Farenheit).  The inside is coated to prevent rusting and corrosion, and will help to take heat away from the head and transfer it to the coolant, thereby cooling the head better.  Inside the combustion chambers, on the valve faces, and in the exhaust ports, PolyDyn worked their magic with a thermal barrier that is good up to 2000 degrees Farenheit.  It should help keep heat out of the head, and in the combustion chamber and exhaust gases.  This should help to give a slight power increase, keep the head cooler because of less heat transfer, and help spool up the turbo quicker.  I'm looking forward to seeing just what this engine will do!

 

Rust Coat Shoot-Out (August 31, 2005)-  My chamber of rusting death is doing its work.  Checking the samples today, I noted that nothing had breached their coatings yet, but there are bubbles on all of the samples.  I've noticed them for some time, but they were just tiny bubbles.  They are tiny no longer!  I think that any day now I'll be seeing a breach of one product or another.  Though I have my suspicions as to which will breach first, I think that all of the samples are so similar that one could really use any product they prefer and expect to get about the best rust protection there is, for the money.  It's just a matter of how much prep you are interested in doing, and cost of the product...

 

PRIMER!!! (August 29, 2005)-  A week off in Tahoe, and I came back to good news and bad news.  The bad news first:  I had brought my freshly machine engine block, head, crank, and flywheel assembly inside to protect them from the rust-promoting humidity that makes up so much of Houston's environment.  The parts were wrapped in thin, plastic garbage bags, and placed on a sheet of cardboard in a spare bedroom.  While we were away, my wife's cat decided to use my parts as its personal potty spot.  The tip-off was when I walked into the room, smelled something funny, and saw a little puddle in the plastic covering the head.  I was furious!!!  My immediate response was to clean the parts with paper towels, coat them in oil, scrub with paper towels again, and coat with oil, again.  Thankfully, everyone I've asked has said that just hitting the surfaces with Scotch-Brite and using WD-40 or motor oil to protect the parts will be enough, and I won't need to re-machine them.

On the positive side, the shell has a nice coat of Z-Chrome primer!!!  Larry called while I was away and let me know that he had a few questions, and wanted to give me time to come over and take some pictures of the shell with primer on it.  You can find them at the page linked above...

 

Random Progress (August 14, 2005)-  This week's progress was so random that I really don't have any pictures to post.  I fixed the sand blaster cabinet by installing a new glove and introducing air gaps to allow for the high volume of air that my shop vacuum moves through the cabinet.  I then filled the cabinet with more sand so that I wouldn't constantly fight to get sand into the siphon tube, and tried it out by blasting the paint and rust off of my fan shroud.  I had some clogging issues, and found that the sand I purchased is far from pure.  There are numerous little rocks in the sand, and as they enter the ceramic funnel in the gun, they will either get trapped, or hit the ceramic with such force that it quickly erodes the funnel.  This is something I'm going to have to address.  I'll probably drain the sand out of the hopper, sift it, and return it to the hopper.

The engine has come back from G&G Performance.  They bored the cylinders out to + 0.030" (I'm not sure what that makes the engine now...  Maybe 1301?), balanced the rotating assemblies, polished the crank (thankfully, it didn't need any further work), put a new ring gear on the flywheel, assembled the clutch, and checked to ensure the block is flat.  While all of that was going on, I checked in on the progress of my head over at PolyDyn, and was welcomed to the sight of a head coated in black phosox.  The plan for the head is to have the outside coated in a slick coating to help with rust protection, heat dissipation, and oil shedding (should any leak from the valve cover).  The chambers and exhaust ports will receive a reflective/insulative coating to ensure that heat stays in the combustion chamber as much as possible, and that the exhaust gases stay as hot as possible for as long as possible.  This should help for spool-up of the turbo, and help the engine breathe better.

Though most of my engine parts are on the way, and I should soon be able to put the engine back together, I have to wait until I find new rings for the pistons.  It seems that AE, the maker of these pistons, stopped making the + 0.030" pistons several years ago, and finding rings for them is exceedingly difficult.  So, I won't be sending out the pistons for coatings (reflective, friction reducing, and oil shedding) until I'm sure I have the proper rings in hand.  Otherwise, I'll have to have the block bored to + 0.040".  What the heck, it's only money, right...?

 

Exhaust Inserts (July 31, 2005)-  Saturday morning was a bust.  I had intended to help with sanding and priming the shell, but only had a couple of hours to spare, and Larry was not at the shop during the time I had available.  Too bad.  Though I'm not what I would consider "skilled", I should be able to help with grunt work and speed along the process of getting the shell painted.  Well, such is life...

Sunday I did some fine-tuning of the unleaded exhaust inserts.  I'd noted that there is a bit of a lip from the insert to the rest of the exhaust port, so I decided to measure that lip.  I used my trusty PlayDoh to make impressions on the back sides of the inserts.  After two days of "drying", the PlayDoh was hard enough to use my calipers on it for measuring.  I came up with two measurements of 0.030" and 0.036".  Using these figures, I determined that the inserts create a 12% reduction in cross-sectional area (I determined this by calculating the area of the insert opening minus the area of the valve stem, divided by the estimated area of the original exhaust port minus the area of the valve stem).  However, when I posted my findings to the MiniMania board, no one saw this reduction in the exhaust side as being that detrimental to performance, but did note that the step on the short side of the port could be an issue, so my only modifications to the ports were to blend the step with the original port as much as I felt comfortable.  While I was in there, I noted some more sharp edges on the short side, so I ground those down, too.

I also began my first cycle of freezing/thawing for the rust encapsulating paint side-by-side comparison.  The samples sit in a block of ice, in the freezer, as I write this.  They will be placed in the sun tomorrow, and then back in the freezer at night.  This will continue until all samples have failed...

 

Blast Cabinet Done (July 24, 2005)-  Finally, the sandblast cabinet is finished!  The last bits that needed doing were the installation of the view window and air hose inside the cabinet.  I permanently mounted the air filter to the cabinet to ensure I have clean, dry air supplied to the blasting gun.  I put my sand into the cabinet, kicked on the shopvac, and prepared to blast my first piece.  However, just as I came to the front of the cabinet, there was a loud BANG!  It scared me, but I couldn't figure out what had made the noise.  I thought that maybe the new viewing window had possibly been hung up on some screw threads and seated itself violently, but wasn't sure.  Then, I put my hands into the glove holes and found that I only had one glove!  Apparently a 4.5 horsepower shopvac is a bit too much suction for my cabinet.  The gloves ended up ballooning until one gave up and destroyed itself.  I was still able to use the cabinet to clean off a brake shield, but this issue will need to be rectified before I use it on a permanent basis.  In addition to the broken glove, there was so much suction that the sand that shot off the part and got into the upper end of the cabinet was sucked into the vacuum, and I constantly lost media!  That's not what the vacuum was intended to do...

I also began my side-by-side comparison of POR-15 Rust Preventive Paint, Rust Bullet, and Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator.  I used a rusty piece of flat stock.  I wire brushed it, then used POR's Marine Clean to remove any oils and residues from the metal.  I treated one end with POR's Metal Ready in preparation of POR's Paint.  The Metal Ready went a bit further than 1/3 up the stock, so the middle paint (the Rust Bullet sample) has the advantage, or disadvantage, of Metal Ready for about a third of the sample.  It's a new wrinkle, not part of the requirement for Rust Bullet.  Rust Bullet only requires a wire brushing and use of a degreaser.  Ditto for Eastwood's Rust Encapsulator.  The POR product was painted one layer, and then another applied about an hour and a half later, when it was finger-drag dry.  Rust Bullet requires a minimum of four hours between coats, and Rust Encapsulator requires only one hour.  Each product was applied according to the instructions supplied with the material.  I will top-coat the bar with white paint to show any rust, that will eventually show through, more clearly, and will then begin accelerated aging processes, logging progress on the side-by-side page.

 

MG Metro Head (July 17, 2005)-  This is the third head I've modified, and the first MG Metro head.  I now understand why the MG Metro makes so much more power than the standard Metro A-series engine.  The beauty of this head is in its intake runners and valves.  The runners look to be opened up a bit, and have a nice smooth curvature.  The valves are considerably larger than the standard head.  However, it still uses standard size exhaust valves, which I'm at a loss to understand.  If you can get the engine to let in more air, why would you not allow it to let more out?  I also noted that the exhaust ports in cylinders 1 and 4 have better breathing than 2 and 3.  I'm not sure if this is by design, or mistake, but I opened them all up to be about the same.  I also noted quite a few casting mistakes (ridges, core mis-match, etc.).  I did my best to smooth these out, without going too deep into the metal and potentially cutting into a water jacket.  It took two days of playing in the garage in the evenings, but I now have a head that is modified to lower compression (25cc chambers) and hopefully has that "power shape" I missed on the last head.  I did cut into the valve seats a bit, but I believe that G&G Performance Engines should be able to correct my little transgressions.  I'll find out tomorrow...

 

Bondo Front (July 10, 2005)-  Body work is NOT my strong suit.  That said, I was pleased with the ease with which I was able to get the flip front looking like it should.  Since the status of the body guy was in limbo, I took the flip back home a little over a week ago to add the brackets and coat with LizardSkin (last week's update) and do as much of the finish work with Bondo as my pitiful skills were capable of.  So, Saturday morning I prepared the garage and started in on the front.  I hearkened back to my early days of automotive experience, back to a short presentation on auto body work in my high school Autoshop class.  In this, my instructor mentioned a tool that looked suspiciously like a wood rasp, using this to rough out the shape of the Bondo, then finishing up with various grits of sand paper.  I searched my tools, and found a newly acquired "cheese-grater" style wood rasp, and tried it out on the roughed-in Bondo where it was thick in the corner to rebuild the damage that had been inflicted on it through the years.  As it turns out, the file worked quite well on old body filler, and helped move the process along quite quickly.  The next step was to get closer to the final shape using 36-grit paper on a flexible block (courtesy of my painter, Larry, at LA Customs).  After that, I finished up with 100-grit, to remove most of the rough scratches from the filler and gel coat.  I know there are a couple of spots that are beyond my current skill, but my goal was to get it mostly there, and then Larry would take over for me.

 

Flip Brackets (July 4, 2005)-  Independence Day, 2005.  Happy Birthday, USA!

I tackled the messy job of preparing the front end for bracketry to attach the special hinges, and then spread LizardSkin on the exposed underside of the flip, right above where the engine will be.  I wanted this to help protect the fiberglass from getting too hot with all of the heat the engine will create, and RhinoLiner in the wheel wells in order to protect against rocks thrown up from the tires.  My problem with the brackets was that I had purchased the hinges after glassing and having the RhinoLiner coating installed.  Without using mechanical fasteners (because they would show through the top), how was I going to attach these brackets?  The simple, but messy, solution was to use the wire wheel on the grinder and remove an area from the RhinoLiner that would allow me to adhere the brackets to the flip.  I decided to use an expanded mesh with tabs welded to it, and adhered this with fiberglass resin and cloth.  It's not the strongest bond possible, but should be adequate for the limited amount of weight that will be on the hinges.  I'm a bit concerned that vibration may cause some issues, but for now it will have to do, and I'll deal with vibration issues if and when they occur.

 

Considerations (June 26, 2005)-  Friday night Hugh "Dr Mini" Cannon and his son Eric stopped by  for a look at the Cooper, as well as to pick up a tire changer I'd bought from Harbor Freight some time back.  Since the shell is still at LA Custom, and it was on the way to my house from where I met Hugh and his son, we decided to stop by the shop and have a look at it.  I showed Hugh and Eric the LizardSkin and RhinoLiner, and Hugh told me a couple of things on the car that showed it to have been originally a hydro-suspended car (another feature of a Cooper 's' of this vintage).  He also pointed out a couple of areas that I'll need to address before the final paint is applied...  To wit, I spoke with Larry (owner of LA Custom) and he informed me that John (the guy that has been working, off and on, on the body work) had decided to take a position with another paint and body shop.  This puts Larry in a very stressful position, and I feel badly for him.  John has left several patrons swinging, and no one is quite sure if he's going to complete the work he's begun (and in some cases already been paid for!).  This is a situation I will have to investigate further tomorrow.

In other news, I've almost completed the sandblast cabinet.  The only bits left to do are to put the viewing window in, install the short air line to the gun, and paint the exterior.  Then I'm ready to take her on a test run!  I've got loads of stuff that needs blasting, so I'm looking forward to getting this done...

 

LizardSkinned! (June 17 - 19, 2005)-  "Into every life, a little rain must fall." (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)  It fell pretty hard on Friday.  'It' being the shell and rotisserie.  I've managed to move the shell several times by myself, now, without mishap.  Friday was just not my lucky day.  In attempting to get the shell off the trailer, the rotisserie hung up on a part of the trailer's rail.  I went up to free it, and the whole assembly rolled down the ramp, out of my control.  When it hit the asphalt, the rotisserie stopped, but the shell kept going.  I was lucky, though:  Thankfully, when we built the rotisserie, we double-strapped the tubes that the main pipe rides in, and those straps held when the shell went back.  This effectively bound with the main pipe, and stopped the shell from going further.  No damage to the shell, and I was able to get the rotisserie mostly straight and fixed Friday night.  Then it was on to preparing the garage for spraying the LizardSkin, and masking off the areas of the shell I didn't want insulated.  Since I didn't meet my deadline of noon, Saturday for getting the shell back to the painter (I had another calamity of a cracked brass 'T' on the automatic drain valve I'd recently installed on my air compressor!) and had to rent the trailer through the weekend, I decided to see what I could do to rust-proof the interior sections of the car that might not be possible to rust-proof after the final coat of paint is on...

 

Head Work, pt. 3 (Sat., May 28, 2005)-  I've finished the one head and made progress on the sandblast cabinet (I got the hinges on the back, hung the door, and applied the weather-strip sealer).  It's interesting, working with various heads.  I am now more aware of the potential issues with heads than I was previously.  For instance, this head was sold to me as an MG Metro head.  It is not (the valves are too small), but it has been pretty well ported.  The exhaust ports have been opened up nicely behind the valves, and slightly on the intake ports at the manifold bolting point.  Not bad work, but I was inclined to open up the exhaust ports a little further.  While doing that, I noted that the ports did not have the ridge defects that the last head had, but the valve guide boss on one of the ports had jagged metal where the boss had, for some reason, started to degrade.  I ground down the jagged metal to ensure there are no hot-spots to cause further issues.  After I finished the work on this head, I stripped down the other head (a genuine MG Metro head), removing the valve keepers and springs using the tried and true method of a 5/8" spark plug socket and a 2 lb. sledge hammer.

While loading the heads into the truck cab, I saw something I thought I would never see;  Two lizards mating!  I've added two photos to the page linked above.  But be warned:  The photos are explicit, showing to lovers in a reptilian embrace.  It's not for the young, or faint of heart...

 

Head Work, pt. 2 (Sun., May 15, 2005)-  Though I don't have a lot of time to spend in the garage, lately, the progress I made was pretty good!  In a few hours, I was able to finish up the head grinding (I think I want to do some more porting, but the chambers are done), put automatic compressor drain valve from Harbor Freight into the air compressor to automatically blow off condensed water, and cleaned up my oven for powder coating.  True to Harbor Freight's typical quality levels, the valve leaked air like a sieve!  It also required extensive 'add-on' hardware, since the kit does not work with the average compressor as-purchased.  However, once I got some teflon tape on every threaded fitting, it all sealed up nicely and new brass fittings and copper tubing ensured a good fit!  Now, instead of periodically going under the compressor and unscrewing the valve, the automatic valve spits out a quick burst of air and condensed water every time the compressor turns on and off.  When I double-checked the water drain, I found the auto drain valve had done it's job very well!  On the topic of the powder coating oven, I'm a bit sad to see it cleaned up.  The oven looks so nice, now, that it's almost a shame to not use it to bake several sheets of cookies!  However, once it's used for powder coating, it is no longer usable as a food cooking oven due to the residue left behind by the powder coating process.  Sad, but true...

 

Head Work, pt. 1 (Sat.., May 7, 2005)-  Plagued by circuit breaker gremlins, I was unable to make as much progress as I'd hoped, but I got most of the way through opening up the combustion chambers on one of my heads.  This was my opportunity to take everything I learned from my first attempt at head modification (and destruction), and make the magic happen.  However, I managed to forget one key step, and ground the chambers further than I'd intended.  I am now in the possession of the world's first Hemi headed Mini!  Actually, I have several heads, and will continue with the current head work and see how it fares against the original, intended design.  Not only did I forget a key design aspect, I left beaks in this head (though re-shaped), and am interested to see if the combination of larger, rounder chamber mixes well with the beaks.  Who knows, it could be one power-mad design! 

Tomorrow I will buy a new circuit breaker to replace the one that keeps popping, and I'll finish out the work I started today.  Next weekend (or maybe some time during the week, if I feel inspired) I'll work on the other head, using the original design.  Or not.  I might just go ahead and do my business with this head, and hold off on working the original design until funds become more readily available, and until such a time that I won't feel totally guilty by spending an entire day grinding in the garage...

 

Seat Redux, pt.2 (Sun., May 1, 2005)-  This was a weekend that really made me feel like I'd accomplished something!  I spent Saturday building a frame on which to mount my Blodgett oven I will be using to powder coat various bits for the car.  The frame was needed because the oven weighs something like 300 pounds, and was taking up too much space on the floor of the garage.  In the frame, I can now move it around easily, and with the shelves in the frame, I can now store powder coating-related items.  Of course, my wife gave me a hard time because, even though I had thought it through, when I was done with the frame, the oven top was at about 6'.  This made for a potentially tippy oven!  I cut 10" out of the frame, and it's at a much more manageable height, now.  Sunday was spent re-upholstering the two front seats for the Mini, and the final product is quite nice!  I did manage to cut through the vinyl, again, with my pliers once the padding had worn out, but bought some cheap, heat-adhering patches at Wal*Mart, and will use them to patch the cuts from the back, ensuring the cuts won't turn into tears. 

 

Seat Redux (Tuesday, April 26, 2005)-  Though the last ten days seem to have been idle, rest assured I have been busy.  Though I have been unable to devote much time to any one project, I was able to progress a little more on the sandblast cabinet, as well as make progress on re-upholstering my seats.  Had I found the proper source, or had Newton Commercial (the company that supplied the replacement interior to my car) been more forthcoming with information, I would now have two re-upholstered front seats.  The one thing that stood in the way of progress was the fact that the original seats used a rubber diaphragm (squab) on seat back, as well as the rubber diaphragm on the seat bottom.  Newton sells only a wire frame seat back, thus I had no point of reference as to its orientation (either the pointy bits should point up, or they should point down).  I tried to contact Newton through their web site, but received no reply.  Though I am disappointed in Newton Commercial's silence, and a complete lack of instructions with the kit, I can't fault them for the fit and finish of their materials:  Nice!  Once I got the seat work underway, it went fairly smoothly, and was reasonably straight forward.  However, for posterity, the Tech Section will house the complete process, from beginning to end, in order to help those that need some sort of reference in the future.

 

Off the Hinges (Sat./Sun, April 16/17, 2005)- Work this weekend centered on the hinges, but I was able to get a few other little projects out of the way, as well.  I was able to strip and POR-15 my seam covers, get my air dryer set up for the sand blaster, painted the seat frames black, and finished the repair on the metal chop saw that I bought used.  All in all, a good weekend!

 

Body Work (Tues., April 5, 2005)- I went this last Saturday to drop off the three cans of Self Etching Primer that had finally arrived from POR, and was pleasantly surprised to see that quite a bit of progress had been made on the body work!  The work was started probably Friday (as I'd already been by several times in the past few weeks and nothing had been done yet), and had already progressed to being about half way done!  VERY fast work!  I then went by today to take a look and some more photos, and John (the body man) let me know that it should be finished by the end of today.  Hoorah!!!  I took a look at the work, and was very pleased.  Even though there are large sections covered in Bondo, it is only paper-thin.  Just enough to fill in the tiny dings in the panels.  He also showed me the two convex dents in the roof, and they were gone!  No Bondo here, just delicate work tapping a body hammer to a dolly.  I ran my hand over the areas, and could not find where the original dents were!  Beautiful.  Just beautiful work.  I'm very excited to see this move on to final paint, but in no hurry.  I want this done well, not quickly...

 

Front Finish (Sun., March 20, 2005)- The final stage in body work was to finish up the glass work on the front end.  I had thought, originally, that I could just glass in the inside, and use body filler on the exterior to fill in the cracks.  However, this would only hide the cracks for a very short time, and then the stresses would show through the filler.   So, the fix is to grind down the cracked areas, making a shallow trough where the crack used to be, and fill that with new glass.  This will take the stresses and prevent further issues.  So, off to work I went!  The first order of business was to re-build the nose that had been ground down on asphalt.  I had essentially three options:  1)  free-hand it and hope that my anemic Bondo skills would prevail, 2) make a negative casting from a good bonnet and cast that onto the fiberglass flip, or 3) make a positive and grind it down to be placed onto the nose and affixed with Bondo.  I decided on option 2), first, with 3) as my backup.  So, working with a chemical and particle respirator, I set to work.  Thankfully, option 2) was just the ticket, and I needed to go no further!  After shaping the new nose piece down, I laid fiberglass over it to protect it and ensure that it doesn't one day just fall off!  And for those working with fiberglass patches, here's what I recommend:  a) Have LOTS of vinyl gloves on hand and change them with every batch of resin you make.  b) Buy a large quantity of 2" chip brushes from Harbor Freight and use one brush per batch of resin you make.  c) Lay down a thin layer of resin on the area you are glassing in (this will help hold the cloth in place).  d) Using the brush, dip it in the resin and tamp it into the cloth, starting at the center of the patch and working your way outward (this will ensure that air bubbles are not trapped under the cloth, gives good adhesion to the lower layer of glass, and keeps the cloth in place since a brushing motion would move it around).  e) Work quickly, but don't panic:  You have 5 to 8 minutes to work at it before the resin cures.  Remember: You want just enough resin on the cloth to wet it to make it stick.  Too much resin will actually weaken the fiberglass, as the strength is in the glass cloth, not the plastic resin.

 

LA Custom (Fri., March 18, 2005)- After Thursday's frustration of the trailer I needed being unavailable, I was finally able to get the shell and other parts over to LA Custom, the body and paint shop that will be doing the work to make all of my work up to this point look worthwhile.  Larry Anthony is the owner, and a man of talent and friendly disposition.  He put up with two weeks of delays from me, while I tried to do the last-minute work I've done in the past couple of weeks.  While there, dropping off the shell, I met the man who will be doing the actual body work, John.  Larry's more interested in doing the paint and custom graphics, while John does strictly body work.  His discerning eye caught many dings and dents that I was unaware of, and I know that in his capable hands, the shell will come back smooth, and unblemished.  Between John and Larry, the final product should be a thing of beauty!

 

POR Door (March 15/16, 2005)- The last pieces needing POR-15 Rust Preventive Paint are the doors and boot lid.  Having to do this after work, I knew that this was going to be a long night.  What I didn't count on was that, due to the unexpectedly cold and low-humidity night, it was going to be a VERY long night!  Under normal conditions in the Houston area, POR-15 will cure to tacky and ready for a second coat in only about 45 minutes.  But because it was so cold and there was so little humidity, it took several hours.  After waiting about two and a half hours, and still finding the paint too wet for another coat, I decided to go to bed and wake up at 2:30 am and do the final coat.  I was going to get up and help take care of the baby, anyway, so I figured it was the right thing to do.  My only regret is that I didn't decide to do that a couple hours earlier.  It would have made my next day much easier...

 

Tank Seal (March 13 & 16, 2005)- The final step in the boot repair was to treat the inside of the lid and lock it out of rusting again.  I started thinking about the tank sealer I'd bought, and contacted POR-15 to ask them if I could use that to seal up the boot lid.  Sure enough, it should protect against water, and binds with rusted metal.  So, I determined that today I would treat and seal the gas tanks and boot lid.  The time involved in doing this is quite lengthy, because several washes with Marine Clean, and Metal Ready have to take place.  As it turned out, all day Sunday was spent treating the interiors for rust and varnish.  Since the metal has to be bone dry to coat it with the sealer, I was forced to wait several days before final treatment.  I'm not overly wowed by the product, but it should get the job done, and that's what really matters.  One thing I am finding pretty consistent in using the POR products is that there really isn't enough information given in their literature to do the job based solely on printed material.  And if the literature says "works best" or "best if", then consider that the minimum requirements.  In my case, the sealer says "best if temperature is above 72 degrees".  As it was a cold night when I finally was able to seal the tanks and lid, I think that that may be why my results were less than awe-inspiring.  But, as I had to get it done to meet my deadline for paint, and I worked during the day, I just had to do my best to heat up the garage as much as possible...  The results are archived under the "Photos" link.

 

Boot Day (Sat., March 12, 2005)- Today was the day to tackle the rotted lower edge of the boot lid.  I stuck to my plan, and cut the tab of folded over metal, and replaced the metal underneath.  You can see from the pictures the results.  I'm feeling good about it.  In addition to patching the rot, I stripped the doors of paint.  Even though I've treated them once for POR application, I don't recall if I used Marine Clean as the first stage.  Due to the importance of this, I've decided to re-treat with Marine Clean, then Metal Ready.  Besides, since I've stripped the door skins, I have to treat it all, anyway...  

 

Door Day (Sun., March 6, 2005)- I tried, but I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped.  Today's goal was to get the doors and boot lid prepped, welded, and PORed.  However, stripping down the doors took some time, and the amount of rust on the doors and boot lid are pretty extensive.  I had considered welding them up, but I will end up using POR Patch to fix the pin holes created by rust.  This will prevent warping from the heat created by welding, as well as prevent further rusting.  The rust on the bottom of the boot lid is really bad, because it is made of two skins of metal, and water will get between the skins and begin to corrode them.  I tried a home-made remedy of muriatic acid and water to try to eat out the rust to allow me easier access to the rotted areas, but this didn't work as quickly as I'd hoped, and I abandoned the plan.  I think that I will have to do this the "right" way and cut the tab from one skin, and then cut out and replace the rot on the other skin.  I'll then weld it all back up and grind it down to make it look right.  Then I'll treat the inside of the boot lid with a POR product, and prevent this from happening again.

 

Black Mini (Sat., March 5, 2005)- Ah, the things we learn as we do them!  Today's project (after last night's scare of regular contractions on the part of my pregnant wife!) was to get the body final sanded, the roof coated, and the subframes and seat frames coated.  It turns out that I didn't buy a quart of gray, as I'd thought, but a quart of black.  I was disheartened by that, and not sure how I would get another coat onto the shell where I'd burned through the POR-15 Rust Preventive Paint with sandpaper.  I went ahead and put a coat of the black on the roof, coated the frames, then used what was supposed to be white POR Patch on the drip rail over the mess I made last time.  The POR Patch ended up being clear, but that was OK.  At least it didn't come out like chunky peanut butter again!  I was able to re-use the mini roller, as I'd used it long enough coating the roof, and then the frames, that it was still pliable.  This helped keep the bits of fuzz to a minimum.  I was pretty happy with the second coat on the roof, and then threw caution to the wind and painted the whole car black.  It's all getting a coat of primer, whatever the body man puts on it, and a final coat of paint, so the black shouldn't affect the final color at all.  The interesting thing I learned, quite by accident, is that using one of those cheap sponge brushes, right after the roller, knocks the fuzz down and gives a nice, smooth finish!  Darn it, if only I'd known that sooner...!

 

Paint Prep (Sun., February 27, 2005)- Maybe "paint prep" is a little too grand a title for what I was able to accomplish this weekend.  With Saturday being a dinner day (we had 7 friends over, and I cooked a feast- turkey medallions with citrus/honey glaze on a bed of green beans, arugula and tomato pasta, horseradish mashed potatoes, and vanilla cream cheesecake...  Yes, I bought the latest "Cooking Light" magazine).  Dinner worked out great,  but I got nothing done until today.  And that wasn't a whole lot, looking back on it.  But I did manage to get the drip rails ground down to take out some of the nasty looking POR Patch.  I left some behind, though, in order to put one more layer over the top of it to make it look better.  I also started wet-sanding the body.  There are lots of drips and fuzz in the surface that I need to knock down before the body guy goes to work on it.  I hate sanding...

 

Goodbye Rust! (Sun., February 20, 2005)- Body panels rusting are a worry of the past!  My project this weekend was to prepare the body and subframes for rust prevention.  I cleaned everything with Marine Clean, then prepped with Metal Ready.  Due to the nature of POR Rust Preventive Paint, two coats are required, and several hours are involved in applying them.  I used a mini (no pun intended) paint roller for application.  The photos show the results.  What they don't show is the finish of the final coat.  In a word:  Blech!  Using a paint roller on a cosmetic surface is highly discouraged.  The roller left tiny bits of fuzz and air bubbles in the finish.  However, my plan is to sand this down with 600 grit prior to applying the Self Etching Primer.  I believe that the final product will do exactly what it's supposed to.

Now, on to another nasty situation:  The drip rail sealant.  I figured that I would be slick and use POR Patch on the drip rails.  I let the car dry for several hours after washing it, so I felt reasonably secure that I was ready for the Patch.  I have kept the tubes, for about three weeks, inside the house to protect them from humidity and temperature changes.  When I squeezed my first tube, I knew that something was wrong.  It felt crunchy, and that's not a good thing in a sealant!  However, since POR isn't open on Sundays for tech support, I decided to power through my issues.  Wow, what a mess.  You can see from the photos that it might have been better to hold off until I had someone from tech on the line.  It was like working with chunky peanut butter, and the results look like I spread that peanut butter in the dark and with mittens on my hands!  I'll be forced, once again, to remove a good portion of what I've done, and go back and fix it.  Looks like my trusty grinder will get more of a workout! Thankfully, I related my tale to the friendly salesman at POR today (I needed more Metal Ready, Self Etching Primer, and some Fuel Tank Sealer for the twin tanks), and he volunteered a free tube of POR Patch to try to correct the flawed work I'd perpetrated upon my drip rails.  I thought that was very neighborly of him!  I can only hope that this new tube will be free of chunks...

 

Bare Shell (Sat., February 12, 2005)- I started today off right with a stop at Kolache Factory and Starbucks, then put my nose to the grindstone!  Well, I really put the shell to the grinder!  I started off by using the yellow abrasive impregnated plastic wheel I purchased from Eastwood.  I was able to do the whole car with that before switching out to the new abrasive impregnated bristle brush I purchased from Rhino.  Thankfully, the shell's metal was as good under the rust and paint as I hoped it would be!  The only areas of small concern are on the roof.  At about the center of the roof, there are some small pitted areas, but I expect that those should easily be filled with a high-build primer, which the painter will use.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't get as much done today as I'd hoped (I actually had hoped that I'd be able to degrease, prep, seal the roof seams with POR Patch, and then hit everything with POR-15 Rust Preventive Paint, and then finish it all off with POR Self-Etching Primer.  Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men.  I should be happy that I'm almost done with getting the paint and rust off.  Sadly, I won't have any time tomorrow, I think, to do any work because we are going to see Cirque du Soleil's Verakai!  We're pretty excited about that, having seen their Drallion in San Jose several years ago.  Well, I'll get done during the week what I can...

 

Cabinet/Seats (Sat./Sun, January 29/30, 2005)- I had a nice, successful weekend, working on the cabinet some more, stripped and welded up the seats, and picked up my new powder coating oven.  It's a lovely, industrial oven that I picked up for a very good price.  My friend who works at a company that does similar work says that this oven is a workhorse, and perfect for coatings.  I'm on my way to becoming coating independent!

 

Blast Cabinet Progress/Rhino Retrieval (Sat./Sun, January 22/23, 2005)- I thought that surely I would have the blast cabinet done this weekend, but it's just not meant to be.  Again, too many things to do in one short weekend.  I've updated the Blast Cabinet page ("Photos" link below) with the progress, and will continue to do so to keep it all on one page.  So far, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.  We'll see how well it works when I'm done (I don't expect any problems, really).

I picked up the shell from Greenfield's on Saturday morning (with a stop off at Kolache Factory and Starbucks for breakfast).  John went back over the lining and did a bang-up job on the details!  He covered the few spots that didn't get total coverage the first time, and did some fantastic work in the wheel wells!  He said he put on an extra gallon of Rhinoliner, and it shows!  It looks thick, sleek, and sexy!  Check out the pics in the "Photos" link above! 

After I picked up the shell, I called a couple of painters in the local area to see if I could swing it by them.  Everyone was out (or at least, not answering their phone), but one shop:  LA Kustoms.  Larry Anderson (the owner/artist) allowed me to come by with the parts, and chat him up about my plans.  He looked the shell over, we discussed my ideas about the little bit of work I intended to finish before handing the shell over, and he gave me a quote that he thought would get the job done.  That quote was within budget (and WELL below the $10k I was quoted previously).  In fact, after seeing his work and getting such a favorable quote, I'm going to ask him to do the graphics on the roof that I want (a close-up center section of a Union Jack in black, grey, silver, and white, waving across the roof)!  Graphics is Larry's forte, and where his interests lie.  It should make him happy that he'll not have to do a simple spray job...

 

Blast Cabinet (Sat./Sun, January 15/16, 2005)- One of the tools I think is absolutely necessary for doing an auto rebuild of this magnitude is a parts blasting cabinet.  With this, I can take parts that fit into the cabinet and blast off old paint and rust.  This will then allow me to put coatings on the parts that will prevent them from further rusting.  I decided that this weekend would be the I would start that.  Things began well enough with a good plan, and the expectation that I had everything that I would need.  The plan consisted of using the frame from a spare metal shelving unit as the base of my blasting cabinet.  I would then build a hopper out of plywood, with a large wooden box along the top.  It was all going according to plan, until I started gathering my materials.  That's when I realized that I did not have enough material to make even the frame, having only three of the necessary four legs!  I had a spare piece of angle iron, and decided to use that for a leg.  Problem solved.  I welded up the frame, and upon review discovered that even though I tried very hard to make sure the frame was square, one leg decided to poke out at an odd angle!  I'll have to cut the welds off and start again with that leg...  Then I went to The Home Depot to get the little bits and pieces that I needed (such as flapper type valve for air intake, metal circular plates to mount the gloves, strapping to hold the corners of the plywood together, etc.).  After an hour of fruitlessly running all over the store trying to gather things I thought would be simple to find, I finally hit upon a few things to make my plan work:  irrigation drain to make a diaphragm type intake valve, plastic plumbing rounds to hold the gloves, and corner brackets to hold the plywood together under the strain of the blasting media.  Ah, it was all coming together...

 

RhinoLined! (Tues./Wed., January 11/12, 2005)- John at Greenfield's called me up, and let me know that the underbody is done!!!  Yay!  He also sent me a load of pictures, showing me the finished product.  I can't wait to see it in person!  Once again, I have nothing but praise for these guys at Greenfield's!

 

Seat Strip (Saturday, January 8, 2005)- Since the car is at the body shop, and I'm waiting on a head to come in in the next week or so (to replace the one that I destroyed with my milling work), I decided that this was a good weekend to tackle the seats.  This will do two things:  It will put me in a position to just bolt the seats in when I'm done and it will get the new seat skins and foam off the parts shelf and clear out the clutter.  In the process of removing the covers from the first seat, I discovered that the seat back needs to come off first, and then the bottom comes off.  Installation would be opposite, with the bottom first, then the back.  The reason for this is that there are some bendable metal clips in the tails of the back that wrap around the seat frame over the tails of the bottom.  Simple stuff!  Not something I'd feel daunted about in the future.  The plan for tomorrow is to beat the metal back into shape (the frames are pretty hammered), put some welds into the hog ring holes where they ripped the tubing, and strip the rust and old paint off for new paint.

 

RhinoLiner Shop (Tuesday, January 4, 2005)- I got a call from John at Greenfield's.  At first, I thought that there might be a problem with putting RhinoLiner on the Mini, but was quickly put at ease.  John was just concerned about the details of doing the bottom of the car.  This was the first time he'd done a Mini, and he wanted to be sure he was blocking off all of the right areas, and not coating areas I didn't want coated.  This is why I'm feeling very good about going with Greenfield's Collision.  All of the guys there seem to really care, and that's something you don't see a lot of today.  Looking around the shop, I saw BMWs being repaired, and they looked nice!  John also showed me the tool he used to sand down the bottom of the car.  It's similar to the tool used in my Welding Lessons installment, but the bristles are flexible instead of stiff.  It's a much more preferable tool to the wire wheel for getting the surface rust off of the steel.  By the time I'd arrived, the bottom looked fresh and shiny!  I can't wait to see it with a coating of RhinoLiner!

 

RhinoDay (Wednesday, December 30, 2004)- Finally, the shell is clean enough to take over to the RhinoLiner shop (Greenfield's Collision and Repair)!  With grey skies looming, I ran over to Discount Trailers and rented a lovely 6'x12' trailer, ran home to pick up the shell and various bits, and was on my merry way to Greenfields.

When I arrived, I met with John and discussed the details of coating the underside.  He seemed enthusiastic about the project, and had some great ideas on how to make the coating easy to care for and the finish look great.  He also highly recommended the body and paint guys (it seems that there are two sides of the house, there), and having talked to the owner, Bob, I am enthusiastic about moving forward with that part of the project.  Bob is very prideful of his personnel's skill, and the quality of the materials they use.  I'm sure that they could give me a finished shell that will meet all of my cosmetic and longevity goals!

 

Blasted Days (Mon./Tues., December 27/28, 2004)- It's funny how you do something, it fails, and ends up working for something else, isn't it?  My plan for the day was to use my sand blasting setup to remove the last of the underbody coating, and the POR-15 and Tie Coat.  Sadly, these products are apparently impervious to the rigors of blasting.  In frustration, I decided to attack an ugly spot of rust in the boot area in preparation of coating.  I noticed that the tarry mess that surrounded the rusted area also disappeared!  So, instead of having to go at the boot area with laquer thinner and TONS of rags, I am able to blast the area clean.  Even though I lost the battle against the underbody coating, I won the battle of the boot.  I'll be using chemical means of removing the coatings.  If that doesn't work, I'll just have to take the little monster to the RhinoLiner shop and see if they know how to get the last remnants off of there...  Update:  Using chemical means and mechanical removal via my trusty chisel, I was able to get off almost all of the coating remains.  Whoohoo!!!

 

d Speedo Returning! (Tuesday, December 21, 2004)- I received a call from Nisonger Instruments, in Mamaroneck, NY, letting me know that my speedo was done!  Yay!  Since deciding to fork out the money and have my speedo rebuilt, I've been very fortunate and happy to be working with Nisonger.  They seem to know their stuff, are organized, and friendly.  They refurbished, lubed, calibrated the speedo, as well as put a new bezel on it (gave me a good price for that!) and checked the functioning of my fuel gauge for free!  They let me know that unless my other gauges have been rebuilt, this will make them look very shabby.  I can't wait to see it!  They also let me know that the WD-40 didn't seem to have any lasting effects on the gauge, and were able to re-set my speedo to zero.  As I am doing a ground-up rebuild of the Mini, and this speedo came out of another car anyway, I definitely wanted the clock reset.  Now, there will be no doubt as to when I rebuilt the car.

 

That 70s Car! (Sunday, November 21, 2004)- I had a wonderful surprise in my e-mail today!  My friend Mike (the second owner of my car) sent me pictures that he took of it in the 70s.  Click on the "Photos" link above, and enjoy the time-warp...

 

Drudgery (November 11-??, 2004)- What can I say?  I can't think of too many jobs that are worse than scraping a new underbody coating off of the bottom of a car you just coated!  Well, the tar would have been worse, but this is no fun, I can tell you.  I will update the pictures as I get more peeled off, but it's slow work.  The awkward positions and effort involved in doing this make it slow going, and I'm certainly not pushing myself now!  I hope to have it done by the end of the month (if for no other reason than to save face!).

On the positive side, I went back to the Title & Registration Division with signed paperwork, and they printed me out a title on the spot!  With my power of attorney paperwork, that title paperwork, and some luck, the local courthouse will let me have a new title in my name.  I need to contact them, though, and find out if I should register the car now (possibly subjecting myself to inspection notices, registration fees, etc.), or wait until I have the car done.  I'll get a hold of them on Friday, most likely, and go from there...

 

Elation! (Wednesday, November 10, 2004)- I just got back from the Texas Department of Transportation, Title & Registration Division, and the lovely and helpful Ida was able to help me immensely!  I told her the story of buying the Cooper, and how I'd uncovered the VIN stamped into the floor pan.  She looked at the picture I brought her of the number, glanced at the missing digit, and said she thought it was a 4.  She didn't find the title using that, so I told her that I knew the names of the last three physical owners, and the earliest one did indeed have it registered under his name (I wasn't sure about the other two).  She went back, looked up in the Microfiche files, and found three potential previous registrants.  The first one she tried was the right one, and the missing digit was indeed a 4!  I'm not sure why it didn't come back on her system when she typed it in (could be that it hadn't been used in so long that it was purged at some time), but she gave me a form to fill out that would release interest in the vehicle, and transfer it to me!  Happy days!  I'm so excited that I can now register the car as it is:  A 1967 Austin Mini Cooper 'S'!

Organization (November 6/7, 2004)- Ah, the weekend!  I've done some minor work on getting the underbody coating off of the car since Tuesday, but not a whole lot.  The garage has been really bugging me, and has been so cluttered with the junk from two garages that I could barely turn around.  This weekend's goal was to get the garage in order.  So, though I was tied up Saturday with hitting yard sales (looking for that high-end baby furniture bargain!), partaking in a coffee cupping at DaVinci's Gallery & Espresso (an interesting event, similar to a wine tasting), going to the company picnic at Oil Ranch, and dinner at a local MOT member's house where we did a little welding practice, Sunday was dedicated to cleaning out the garage.  I went at the daunting task methodically, pulling things out of the garage and staging them for eventual re-storage.  In addition to this, I was able to replace two of the wheels on the rotisserie with some locking wheels, make a door stop that I've been putting off for ages, strip down the two spare, rust-holed doors from the MkIII, and remove the boot lid skin from the same car (one of the MiniMania members is looking for a section of this).  All in all, it was a pretty successful weekend.  I now have room to work in the garage without having to constantly move junk aside...

Customer Service (Tuesday, November 2, 2004)- I called Eastwood today because the customer service rep, Angela, told me to call back if I wasn't satisfied with the resolution from SEM.  I wasn't able to speak to Angela again, but the customer service rep that I did speak to was very friendly, and even offered to refund the money for the bedliner!  Wow!  That was unexpected.  So, I was able to recoup a sizable portion of the money I spent on the liner.  That made my day.

I then spoke to the POR-15 tech line.  As ever, they were very knowledgeable.  The rep looked at my BLOG photos, and agreed that for some reason the bedliner seemed to have reacted with the Tie Coat.  It could have been my application of the Tie Coat, but they said they would send me a can of their new Self-Etching Primer, a product that is supposedly even better than their Tie Coat!  Outstanding!  They also recommended that I scrape off the bedliner, sand the Tie Coat down to POR-15, and put another layer of POR-15 down, before using the Self Etching Primer.  I'm not excited about scraping off the liner, but there is nothing for it... 

PRO-TEX Problems (Monday, November 1, 2004)- Today started out bad, and went to worse.  I woke up around 4am, and the rain was coming down in torrents.  At 6am, it was still coming down with no let-up.  I braved the elements and drove to Jarrad's at 8am, fancy little tilt trailer in tow.  Seeing no letup in the rain, and quickly losing hope that I would be able to take the shell to some painters for quotes before I had to return the trailer, I decided to shrink-wrap the car to prevent the Tie Coat from getting wet, as well as keep the damp off of the exposed, already surface-rusting metal.

Jarrad helped me wrap the car, and he made the horrifying discovery that the PRO-TEX Bedliner was bubbling!  NOOOOOO!!!!  Sure enough, it was.  I punctured the liner to let the gases escape, but then worried that the liner wouldn't adhere properly, and I now had intrusion points for water which would cause severe rusting issues, eventually.  I immediately called Eastwood customer service (I won't even go into the details of the person who answered the phone, but I think that answering the phone for a large company may not be something for which she is well-suited), and was told that I needed to call SEM, the maker of the bedliner.  After I finally contacted a tech with SEM, he asked me to go through the steps I used to coat the liner.  At first, his opinion (with no background info) was that I had not allowed enough time between layers of coating, but that is not possible since just unloading the gun took 10 to 15 minutes, then time for mixing another batch, in addition to the fact that each batch only did a small section of the floor pan.  Then I mentioned Tie Coat, and instantly that had to be it!  The instructions didn't say not to use Tie Coat, of course.  They recommended their own products for rust encapsulation and priming.  I countered with the fact that the instructions don't say that the product may not work properly with another product, and certainly no mention of POR-15 products at all (not that I would expect that, but with his line of blaming the POR product and claiming I had not followed directions, POR not being named makes as much sense as his line of thinking).  It was a pretty frustrating call, and I think that what I take away from it is that I'm out about $275.  I really wish, now, that I had just stuck to my original plan of having the local Rhino Liner shop do it for me.  I'm at a pretty low place, right now.  To top it all off, I have to remove all of the liner, re-doing what I just spent the last week working on!

On the plus side, I was able to get the shell to my home and get the garage re-arranged enough to allow my wife's car to get in.  I also got the trailer back to NationsRent just in the nick of time.  I am now relaxing, unwinding, and trying not to think about it all as wasted effort.

Looking closely at the bits of liner I pulled off, I really wonder where the problem lies.  I noted that a drip of oversprayed bedliner was adhered to the firewall.  I picked it off, and it came off easily.  Looking at the side that was attached to the firewall, I saw that it was indeed adhered to the Tie Coat.  That tells me that either it reacted with the Tie Coat and caused that layer to peel up, or that something about how I applied the Tie Coat was wrong, or maybe I got a bad batch of Tie Coat?  I just don't know.  I'm going to call the POR-15 tech line (always friendly and knowledgeable) tomorrow and see if they can help me figure out what went wrong...

 

Underbody Blast (Sunday, October 31, 2004)- Since I had to wait at least 24 hours before overcoating the Tie Coat, I had the time and luxury to help move Jarrad and his wife out of their house.  The trucker showed up early in the morning, and we began the serious moving by 9am.  I was only able to help until about 1pm, because I told my wife that I would take some time and run house errands with her.  I went back a little after 3pm, helped a small amount, and then it was time to head off to Lowes to pick up a trailer from NationsRent.  They rented me a nice little 6'x10', tilt-bed trailer that they allowed me to tow behind my Toyota pickup!  If you've ever tried to rent anything with a Toyota pickup, you know how exciting it is when you find someone that will rent to you!  U-haul won't even rent a garden trailer to me!

After bringing back the trailer, I started to prep the garage for doing the underbody.  I masked off the car, layed plastic and canvas on the ground, and hung plastic sheeting from the walls to protect them from any overspray.  Then I started digging into the PRO-TEX Bedliner...

WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!!  I read the instructions on the containers, and figured out how much catalyst to base to use.  I mixed my paint (I got the color code for Tweed Grey from MiniMania, but the final color seems to be way too dark!) into the base.  I poured some of the one gallon base into a spare container, added the grey to each, mixed independently, then poured one into the other and mixed (doing this several times) until both containers were the same color.  In the commercial painting industry, this is known as "boxing".  I had separate stirring sticks for each material (one stick for the base/paint, one for the catalyst, and one for the catalyzed mixture).  It required two spare containers, one for measuring the catalyst (10 oz.) and one for measuring the base/paint (22 oz.).  These were then mixed in a bucket that comes from Eastwood for this purpose.  After mixing, I poured the catalyzed material into the schutz cup (a roughly 32 oz. plastic bottle that screws onto the siphon tube of the texture gun).  While I'm at it, by the way, the gun I got from Eastwood was defective!  The aluminum siphon tube was so long, I couldn't screw the schutz cup to the gun!  Luckily, even though Jarrad's garage was empty and only a very few of my tools were there, I had my pneumatic cut-off wheel handy.  Being a Harbor Freight "el cheapo stinko" unit, it had a difficult time with the thin aluminum tube, but I finally cut about 3/16" off the bottom, and was ready for action.  The first batch of material went on fairly easily, but seemed to take a very long time.  And even though I had my eye protection and chemical respirator (for which I was VERY thankful by the end!), I had neglected to consider hearing protection.  The noise the gun puts out is quite ear piercing, so I rolled up some paper towels and stuffed them in my ears.  That helped a bit.

The second batch became a bit of an issue.  Long before I figured I'd emptied the container, I was having very little success.  I finally decided that the mixture must be starting to kick over, and was getting too thick for the venturi effect of the gun to draw the material up the siphon tube.  And then it hit me:  If it kicked over too quickly, my tube would be permanently clogged, and that would be then end of my coating efforts!  I frantically searched the instructions on the containers for cleanup instructions so that I would know if I could use the acetone I'd brought with me to clean off the gun.  However, and inexplicably, there are no cleanup instructions on the container!!!  I was in a panic, and then I remembered that I had my soda from lunch in the trash, and it had a straw on it that I could use to push the thickened material through the tube.  I unscrewed the siphon tube and was, thankfully, able to push out the material. 

I took the remaining material in the cup and used a mini paint roller to coat the bottom of the belly pan so as not to waste any.  After another batch kicked too quickly, I decided that I needed to use a little less catalyst.  This helped greatly in keeping the batch thinner and easier to work with.  I finished up around 11pm, feeling tired, but happy that I now had a good, thick coating on the bottom of the car, and should be able to take it around to painters on the morrow...

 

POR Day (Saturday, October 30, 2004)- Wow, what day!  I spent nine hours of continuous, back-aching work, but made a load of progress.  The goal was to have the floor pan in primer by noon, because I can't coat over the primer for at least 24 hours (it needs at least that long to cure, or it will ruin whatever is going over the top of it).  Maybe with just an underbody coating it wouldn't be a big deal to do it earlier, but I'd rather not risk it.  In the photos, you will see the process I used, from start to finish.  The only break I took today was to gulp water from a faucet.  It just amazes me how much water a body needs in the heat and humidity of Houston, Texas.  I had gulped down my 32 oz. water jug by noon, and had my face in the sink, getting as much water in me as I could, several times throughout the afternoon.  I say afternoon, because I didn't complete the process through to primer until about 4:40 PM.  Yes, I'm a little off-schedule.  That's OK, though, because I'll be using my morning tomorrow to help load Jarrad and his wife's worldly possessions into the moving truck.  That should give me a very empty garage to work in for coating, so the sooner I can get them loaded up, the better!  Of course, with turning the clock back an hour tonight, this will give me an extra hour to work with, too.  I'll be picking up the trailer tomorrow at four or five to bring the shell to my home, and take however long it takes to coat the Mini afterward.  I'm not sure if I'll have time to do both the PRO-TEX Bedliner and the LizardSkin, so my primary goal will be to coat the PRO-TEX Bedliner.  If I have time, I'll do the LizardSkin.

 

A Hand (Friday, October 29, 2004)- I was worried/stressed out that I wasn't going to get the car done this weekend, so Jarrad spent a couple of hours with me out in the garage, grinding paint off the car, and doing all of the little things that need to be done before I coat the bottom of the car.  I gave him the cup brush I had been working with, and used the new one I bought today.  Looking at the two side-by-side, it's amazing how much I wore the old brush down!

I had hoped to get the boot cleaned out and ready for coating, but after working on it for a half hour, I realized that it was going to be too much work to get it done in time.  Someone, at some time, had coated the interior of it with more tar-like substance, and it just got messy.  I'll leave off of that until the shell is in my garage.  It won't take long to clean it out, but it was more time than I could spend this weekend, with the amount of work I have to do.

 

Almost "De-paintified" (Thursday, October 28, 2004)- I became a little panicked tonight because I lost track of time...  My cup brush was wearing down, so it didn't remove material as effectively, and as a result, I thought I was taking WAY too much time to remove the paint (and I had forgotten to bring any timepiece with me when I went over to Jarrad's to work on the car.  So, I hurriedly slapped paint remover onto the interior of the floor pan and rubbed it back off when it bubbled (feebly).  I was rather surprised when I got back into my car to go home and the clock only ready 10:15pm!  I'm satisfied with tonight's progress, though.  The entire underside is done (some minor spots left, but I'll take care of that tomorrow night with the new wheel), and I've increased my productivity for tomorrow by softening up the paint on the inside.  To which, I should note, if I were to do this again, I would soften up the paint that is well-adhered with Jasco Paint and Epoxy Remover prior to wire wheeling it.  The progress is MUCH greater when that is done...  These are the things you learn when you've done this a time or two...

 

More Progress (Wednesday, October 27, 2004)- I am just a little more than half way there on grinding off the old paint and tar.  It's long, laborious, and sweaty work.  But the trade-off is I get to lay the foundation properly to ensure that rust will no longer be a problem in the future.  It's worth all the effort to ensure I end up with a good final product.  I'm just very thankful for having a wife that understands the position I'm in and doesn't give me a hard time about coming home at 10:30 at night, covered in grime.  She's a good woman, and makes this situation much more bearable...

Paint Removal Progress (Tuesday, October 26, 2004)- Not much new to tell tonight.  Same stuff, different day.  I did, however, spend about 3 hours of continuous work with the angle grinder, and I still have no complaints about it!  The only time it got warm (and this was to be expected) was when I got a little impatient and pushed down harder on the cup brush to speed up a particularly well-adhered area's "de-paintification". 

I've made pretty good progress tonight.  More tar on the inside was removed (almost all of the tar in the seams is now gone), and half of the interior is down to bare metal.  I also decided to have a go at the exterior belly pan, and as you can see in the photos section, it went rather well!  After only about a half hour, I was able to strip the floor almost to the exhaust tunnel!  It's kind of hard to see, but the top half of the pic is bare, and the lower half is paint/rust/metal.  I'll be back at it again tomorrow.  I estimate that two more good nights of work like this, and I should have the body in good shape for the protective layers (POR-15 Rust Preventative Coating, Tie Coat, then LizardSkin